Christian relationships

I Timothy 5:1-2 Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he
were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and
younger women as sisters, with absolute purity.
A young man once turned up in the Young Peoples Meeting. He was taking a
course in the town being an apprentice furniture designer from Oxfordshire. He
was confident about his knowledge of Christianity. If your relationship is right
with other people then it is all right with God, he told me. He demonstrated
this to me with an upside-down capital letter T he actually stood one book
on the back of another. When we are not level with other people, he said,
moving the foundation at an angle, then we will not be straight with God
the tall pole of the T was swaying back and fore. He had learned that from
some minister.
That approach, we guess, is very common Get right with your neighbour and
you will be right with God but it is not Christianity. The Scriptures chief
commandment it to love God, and then, after that, to love our neighbour. That
is the revealed order. The Bible says that mankinds chief problem is that its
relationship with God is out of line. For example, the Lord once came to the
prophet Amos and showed something to him; The Lord was standing by a wall
that had been built true to plumb with a plumb line in his hand. And the Lord
asked me, What do you see, Amos? A plumb line, I replied. Then the Lord
said, Look, I am setting a plumb line among my people Israel; I will spare them
no longer' (Amos 7:7&8). God places the plumb line of his ten commandments
against our lives and it reveals that not a single person is true to plumb: there
is ungodliness. A mark of that is to be seen in peoples messed-up
relationships: there is unrighteousness. When our lives are not pointing to God
then the consequences are difficulties in families, in friendships and especially
with members of the opposite sex. But if we know the Lord to be our own
reconciled God then there will be growing reconciliation with men and women.
These exhortations of Paul to Timothy in this text of Scripture will be our
delight.
How important is this matter of human relationships? Our relationship with God
of course has prime place, but hot on its heels is this matter of how we relate
to other people. The Chairman of Relate is 51 year-old Ed Straw, the brother
of the current Home Secretary. Relate is the countrys leading marriage
guidance organisation. This month he vigorously attacked what he called
nuclear family supremacists, that is, people like Christians who promote
marriage as an ideal family form. What did Ed Straw want? The Times said, he
recommended that children be taught relationship skills that apply to
everyone. This would assist pupils at home, work and play and help to foster
family life without casting judgment' (Times, February 4, 2000). Brothers Ed
and Jack Straw witnessed their father, Walter, walk out of the family home
leaving their mother to bring up five children alone. His own marriage broke up
after he and his wife, Jane, had had three children. He now has a baby Odette
with his partner Lyn with whom he has been living for ten years. Ed Straw
doesnt have much time for newspaper editors and government ministers who
feel obliged to tell people how to live their lives. He says, What everyone in a
relationship wants and needs is to be able to talk to one another, to be self-

aware, to resolve conflicts. Not standards that have been given to us from
heaven, that are for our good, but lots of talk to one another about our new
infatuations and our old dying marriages, and how it makes sense to split up.
Christians are also not too enthusiastic about a morality that comes from an
unregenerate Caesar. But we are watchful that those who confess Jesus Christ
as their Lord and God should live in the kind of relationships with other people
that the Creator desires. Consider the larger context of our text. The apostle
has been reminding Timothy of the great message of Gods grace in the
Saviour, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners (1:15), that he
gave himself a ransom for all men (2:6), and that the mystery of godliness is
great: He appeared in a body (3:16). That theme is the good news of
Christianity and to be declared by Timothy to all the people of Ephesus.
Through believing it they can get right with God through the Lord Jesus. This
message he exhorts Timothy to command and teach all men, urging him,
Dont let anyone look down on you because you are young, (4:12). But just in
case Timothy might become overbearing and start to throw his weight around
Paul is cautioning him here about becoming abusive, especially towards the
elderly, and to women. He is reminding Timothy in our text of what his
behaviour should be to other people. We can see that this Christian message is
beginning to create within the Roman Empire an alternative society where
there are new attitudes between men and women, and between the young and
old. The greatest in this new kingdom is the servant.
That is the background to this next section in which the apostle is writing about
Christian behaviour amongst the people of God. They have been reconciled to
God, and now that same grace must reconcile them to one another. Where
does he start? Strangely for us, with Timothys relationship with older men. This
is very topical. There are plenty of elderly people around. We are all living
longer. There is the greying of all our Christian congregations. The Reformed
movement was led by young couples who suddenly seem to have become
grandparents. I was preaching in a Bible Rally on a Saturday night recently in
Sheffield. The little church was full, but there were present only two or three
people younger than myself. How, then, are we to address older men?
1. Exhort an Older Man as if He were Your Father.
Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father
(v.1). Paul is not saying that there is no place for rebuke in the Christian
ministry. The Scriptures are profitable for rebuking and correcting all of us, but
on those occasions the preacher does not rebuke as if he were Moses coming
down from the mountain with the tablets of stone in his hands. The rebuke of
God is just as much upon him too as he waits at the foot of the mountain of
God with all the other people. Certainly Paul is not saying, Never rebuke an old
man. There was a time in the prophet Nathans life when he had to rebuke old
King David, You are the man! (2 Sam. 12:7). The emphasis in our text is upon
the word harshly. However much the reproof is needed it must not be given
harshly.
Paul gives counsel to the Galatians about how to react to a brother caught in a
sin (Gals. 6:1). The apostle says, restore him gently. The word restore
means to mend or repair. It is used in the New Testament of the fishermen
mending their nets. I have gone crab-fishing with my grandsons at the harbour

and there has scarcely been an occasion when they did not get their lines
tangled up. The worst thing you can do is to savagely pull on those lines. You
have to be gentle to sort out the mess and straighten things out again. Present
in the Galatian church was a brother caught in sin. Gently deal with him in
order to restore him. The servant of the Lord must not strive but be gentle with
all men.
This is specially the case when you are dealing with an older man because his
age calls for respect. You take special care in choosing your words when you
confront him. You speak in a kindly manner, and do all you can to affirm your
regard for the dignity of his age. Think what the Holy Spirit says, Rise in the
presence of the aged, show respect for the elderly and revere your God. I am
the Lord (Lev.19:32). Think of the way young Daniel in Babylon dealt with the
pressure being brought to bear on him to eat the food and wine assigned to
him from the kings table. He went to the chief official and talked to him
privately and humbly, asking him for permission to refrain from eating the food.
We are told, Now God had caused the official to show favour and sympathy to
Daniel (Dan.1:9), and he agreed with Daniels request. His whole attitude
encouraged a sympathetic hearing.
There is an even more striking example of this when a man named Nabal
insults David and refuses his men their request for food. When this is reported
to David he says Put on your swords! (1 Sam. 25:13), and four hundred of
them march with David to Nabals house. The king is telling them that he wont
leave one of Nabals men alive. When Abigail, the wife of Nabal, hears of the
folly of her husband she quickly gathers together donkey-loads of food and
rides with them as fast as she can to David. We are told that, When Abigail
saw David she quickly got off her donkey and bowed down before David with
her face to the ground. She fell at his feet and said, My lord, let the blame be
on me alone. Please let your servant speak to you; hear what your servant has
to say (1 Sam.:25:23ff). There follows a stirring poetic speech rich in respect
and wisdom. David is utterly overwhelmed by it, and his opening words are,
Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, who has sent you today to meet me
(I Sam. 25:32ff). He actually shakes her hand and says to her, Go home in
peace. I have heard your words. Abigails gentleness before this figure of
authority defuse the situation.
Another example, even more striking, is of the apostle Paul confronting the
apostle Peter. You remember that Peter was the first among the twelve. He had
been with Jesus since his baptism and was an eyewitness of great miracles. But
there came a time in his life, almost twenty years after the resurrection, when
Peter behaved foolishly, and so Paul determined to go to this older man in the
faith and not be harsh with him, but things in a church had to be put right.
When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he was
clearly in the wrong. Before certain men came from James, he used to eat with
the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate
himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the
circumcision group. The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their
hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray. When I saw that they were not acting
in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter in front of them all, You are a
Jew, yet you live like a Gentile, and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force
Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?' (Gals. 2:11-14).

This was a make-or-break gospel issue. The future of Christianity was at stake.
Was it going to be another Jewish denomination like Pharisiaism say,
Jesuitism or would it be something absolutely new? Paul saw how crucial was
this action of Peters and he addressed the matter. He was not a peace-at-anyprice man. The question could not be ducked, and Paul took his courage in his
hands and spoke publicly to Peter because publicly and pointedly he was no
longer sitting down and sharing a meal with Gentile Christians because they
were second class. Peters disaffiliation from them was saying that they needed
to keep the food laws of the old covenant if they were going to be proper
Christians. We are not told of Peters immediate response but we do know that
at the end of his life he refers to Paul in Peters second letter as our dear
brother Paul (2 Peter 3:15). So Peter agreed that he had been doing wrong.
Old men are often an example to us of quiet wisdom and restraint. Think of
Abrahams response to his nephew Lot when their two groups of herdsmen
were fighting over watering their herds. Abraham tells Lot that it would be
better for them to herd their animals further apart, and he gives the choice of
pasture to Lot. He denies himself for the sake of his young and unwise nephew.
Exhort him as if he were your father, says the apostle. In other words, your
relationship with your father is supposed to be the standard for how you treat
other older men. There is an honour which we are to give to our own fathers.
So we are to exhort an older man respectfully: the word exhort has been
transliterated elsewhere as paraclete. In other words, you encourage him
kindly and firmly. There may come a period when life with our fathers becomes
very trying. Senility changes them. A stubbornness and lack of co-operation
which they had never previously showed comes to the fore. You have to
constantly repeat explanations to them each night. No, theres not a meeting
tonight. Yes, this is your home now: you cant go home. Yes, Mother has died.
You exhort them, and having to go over it again and again can be enormously
trying. But all the time you love them, and are aware that this is your father.
You feel wretched with yourself and before God when you have lost your
patience with them and fail to love them. Paul tells Timothy that this is how the
older people in the congregation are to be treated. Do not rebuke an older man
harshly but exhort him as if he were you father.
2. Treat Younger Men as Brothers.
Timothy is being reminded that he a member of a family. The apostle is not
talking here about community in that broad sense that the word is being used
today. Christians are not the only people who take up the words brother and
love. As the 21st century begins we notice that some people are getting tired
of individualism and self-focus. The fad about self-love and self-interest has
died down. The question, Whats in this for me?, unbridled introspection,
worship that turns me on, and personal analysis many are ready for a change
from all of that self-indulgence. Individualism is out because individualism
hasnt worked. So now we are into community. But unless there is the radical
change which the new birth brings and unless the living God has become the
centre of our lives then community becomes just another strategy for feeling
better about ourselves. It takes away our loneliness and we feel more
connected and self-satisfied. Men are again pursuing community for self-

fulfilment, and in time community will go the same way as self-love just
another fad.
Paul is not talking here about community but about that brotherly love which
exists among Christians who have been made brethren in Christ by Gods
grace. It is founded upon our common relation to the Saviour, that we are
united to him and so with one another. He is our common Lord, common
Redeemer, our common portion, the object of our supreme love. He is the
reason we keep together. We love one another in Christ. We are both indwelt by
the Holy Spirit with a common life one faith, one hope and one baptism.
There is a congeniality we share as brothers in the same family. We sympathise
with one another in both our likes and dislikes, and we have a common aim in
life. This is the sort of spirit the Bible is talking about when it refers to brotherly
love. In fact, if you are a stranger to brotherly love then you are not a Christian.
Johns logic is impeccable if a man does not love his brother whom he has
seen how can he love God whom he has not seen? Treat younger men as
brothers!
Brotherly love means I am recognising this person as a fellow-Christian, and I
enjoy being with him, and want to promote his welfare. I rejoice with him in his
happinesses and grieve along with him in his sadnesses. I worry about him. I
stand by him and defend him. Ill be patient with him and though I wont always
agree with him I will always judge him charitably. Love endures all things, and
believes all things, and hopes all things about a fellow Christian. Treat younger
men as brothers!
Having brotherly love means that harshness, meanness, any desire to put
down, degrade or wound the feelings of another has no part in your
relationship. It means you mortify any feelings of envy or jealousy towards him.
There is to be no attitude of superiority, or contempt, or harshness in your
spirit at all. Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. Brotherly love is
the cement, and the blessedness, and the oil of the churchs fellowship. This is
a foretaste of what we are going to experience perfectly in heaven. The living
God known and loved as our Father, and all of us his sons and daughters. The
less brotherly love is seen in a church the more like hell a church becomes. I
am sad to say that for some Christians in this world, church as a family does
not exist.
There were so-called friends of the prodigal son who gathered around him
once he arrived in the distant city and had money to spend. They had the
smiles for him, and the thumbs up. OK mate? Hows it going, mate? The
drink flowed: Another round on me. What a marvellous man! But when all the
money had gone his new family had disappeared. Wealth brings many friends,
but a poor mans friend deserts him (Provs. 19:4). Fair weather friends, we
call them. But brotherly love endures. It was seen in Jonathan when he said to
David, Whatever you want me to do, Ill do for you (I Sam.20:4). You are
suddenly in trouble. You might have lost your job, your salary, you cannot keep
up the mortgage payments and might have to get out of your house. Then your
friend says to you. If the worst comes to the worst you can move in with us. It
will be a bit of a squeeze, but well fit in. Ive got enough money for us to live
on. His words takes your breath away, and you know he wasnt joking. The

artless way he said it just reminded you that God owns everything and he will
supply your needs one way or another.
What are the marks of a brothers love for a brother? Patrick M. Morley
suggests ten in his book, The Man in the Mirror:
When things turn sour you have these people to turn to with the problem.
You can express honest thoughts to them without appearing foolish.
They will let you talk through a concern without giving you advice. They are
happy to be just a sounding board.
They will risk your disapproval by suggesting that you are leaving your
priorities.
They are prepared to tell you that you are doing wrong.
When you have fallen into sin you know theyll stand by you.
You know that together you are facing the future. If she is a woman you can
share with her friend the struggles that are uniquely a womans, while a man
can share with his friend the struggles that are uniquely a mans.
You can trust them implicitly so that if you share a confidence with them it
stays confidential.
When you appear vulnerable and weak to them they will think no less of you.
You will sometimes end a time together with them by praying (see pp.118 and
119).
That is Christian brotherly love. I look at many of the friendships amongst the
students and thank God for that. I pray that they will be friends for life.
Solomon said, Two are better than one, because they have a good return for
their work: If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who
falls and has no one to help him up (Eccles. 4:9-10). Everybody falls down: we
enter spiritual wilderness experiences, rejection, family heart-aches, career setbacks, I say, we all fall down. Who will lift us up if there is no one who loves us
like a brother? Someone came to see me: I just needed someone to talk to,
he said. For an hour he went on talking about something, and then I prayed
and he left. You have no idea what that meant to me, he said. I had only said,
Hi, and Good-bye, and prayed with him. We had another letter this week
from a woman who was a student and worshipped with us. She often writes. We
never expected that she would keep these links. She was retiring and
withdrawn. She never opened up to us about her past, and we never pried. We
often wondered during those three years if she were a true Christian. She said
in this months letter that her time in Aberystwyth were the happiest years of
her life. I would never have guessed that because she was not a demonstrative
person. She felt loved here.
There is a difference between friendship and brotherly love. Imagine a series of
concentric circles. The outside one is the flock of 500 people Jesus gathered of
people who believed in him. There were 120 men. There were 70 disciples, and
twelve apostles. There were three apostles in a special inner circle, and there
was John whom Jesus loved in a special way. So we are not to feel guilty about
being closer to one or two people in the congregation. All the five hundred were
recipients of Jesus brotherly love, but with some of them he was particularly

close. But if any one of the 500 was going through a tough time then the Lord
knew about it and they always had Jesus to turn to. A friend loves at all times,
and a brother is born for adversity (Provs. 17:17). So Timothy is to treat the
younger men as his brothers in Christ.
3. Treat Older Women as Mothers.
One of our sons-in-law, Gary Brady, recently lost his mother, and he has had to
work through his sense of grief. He edits the Grace magazine and has used his
writing skills to express in its columns his thankfulness to God for her. He
acknowledges, Any good I do as a preacher is due greatly to my mothers
nurture. We must never think motherhood a lowly calling. It is crucial. What
impact mothers have. My mother had many jobs, perhaps too many. However,
she never looked at these as her career. When she was asked to be London
buyer for a boutique she refused as it would harm her career as housewife
and mother (Grace magazine, February 2000, pp.10 & 11).
Gary talks of her energy: My mother was never one to sit down. When she
eventually did she would fall asleep. She instinctively agreed with Proverbs
10:4 Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth, and
Ecclesiastes 9:10 Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might
and, perhaps, New Testament verses about self-control. She was determined to
make every day count up early, working hard, being diligent. Her attitude was
workmanlike. She would say things like, Youve got to make your brain work,
You need to keep at it. She would attack me for my couldnt care less
attitude. A favourite rejoinder to laziness was an ironic Lie down there and Ill
fan you.
Mrs Rose Marie Brady became a Christian after Gary had become a preacher: I
prayed many years for her conversion and at last God answered. It seemed
impossible, yet it happened. I saw changes in my mother I hardly imagined.
They could have come only by Gods grace.
I write these things about one son and his mother to help bring your emotions
under the power of the truth. In a Christian congregation all the older women
are to be treated as mothers. Think of the Lord Jesus upon the cross and he
calls his mother to the attention of the apostle John and he says to him,
Behold your mother. Marys husband Joseph had died, and now her first-born
son Jesus would soon be dead. Here was an older woman who needed
protection and support, and Jesus tells John to treat her as his mother. That was
the attitude of the apostle Paul himself. He writes to the congregation in Rome
and he speaks of the mother of a certain Rufus, and he says that she has been
a mother to me too (Roms. 16:13). Paul treated Rufus Mum like his own. There
was a likeness which grace had made. He did not have to pretend she was like
his mother. Grace had put them in a new relationship.
The journalist and author Julie Burchill writes in yesterdays Spectator and
says, My mother died last month, and I do miss her. I miss her most of all
because she was the only person Ive ever known who was remotely like me.
This is the curse of the Teen: when our hormones kick in, all we want to do is to
get away from our parents and be with persons like us. Too late we realise that,
if weve been lucky enough to be blessed with good parents, theyre the only
people like us well ever find. All our roaming and searching was in vain, then,

forsaking our hearts ease for a soft parade of straw dogs (Spectator,
Diary, 12 February 2000, p.9). Thats why there should be no generation gap
in the new covenant church. The parents and the children are one. Remember
the very final verse of the entire Old Testament describing the fruits of
Messiahs reign He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and
the hearts of the children to their fathers (Mal.4:6). With that promise the Old
Testament ends.
God wrote on the tablet of stone, Honour your mother, and that tablet was
put in the ark of the covenant in the Holy of Holies. Everyone is to treat his or
her mother with honour. As a boy Gary Brady was not a churchgoer and neither
was his mother, and yet God had written the things of his law on both their
hearts. They were also living in the nation of Wales that has formerly known the
workings of great saving grace. So parent and child were without excuse if
honour were absent from that relationship. Gary writes, I was brought up on
the basis of this law. She wanted me to obey and honour her and my dad. It is
one reason I have lived so long. I had friends who shouted at their mothers in
the street, something I never dreamt of. If he had failed to honour her would
she ever have been persu aded to have become of follower of Jesus Christ?
We honour our parents because they are made in the image of God. We honour
our parents because the law of God requires it. We honour our parents for their
office as the ones who brought us into the world they did not say, Well kill
this one in the womb. You were given birth and life and nurture. Hours of toil
were bestowed upon you, innumerable sacrifices were made for you every
week. Honour your mother! Women themselves are undermining such an
attitude. One of the slogans of some feminists is Motherhood Just Say No!
There are constant sly attacks on being mothers. One lady wrote to Dear
Abby and described her mother as a professional woman who collected a
husband, a daughter, and a dog to enrich her life. According to the daughter,
the only one not damaged by this enrichment was the dog (The Northwest
Arkansas Times, September 28, 1974). What pathetic wit.
Such an attitude cannot survive being in Christ. Our affection for older women
is not based only on their being made in the image of God, or that we are
commanded to honour our parents, but that within the church the older women
are believing, worshipping, praying mothers. To understand Elisabeth Elliot you
need to know something of that mother of hers whom she has written about in
The Shaping of a Christian Family (Thomas Nelson, 1992). She tells her
readers, Mother always had her little rocker as she called it, in her bedroom,
next to the little antique sewing table which stood under the window. On top of
its crisp white linen cover was the neat stack of Bible, hymnbook, and the small
red prayer notebook with a pen handy. Mother, as erect as Whistlers mother,
sat in her rocking chair, reading, singing softly, praying, and occasionally
jotting something in the margin of her Bible or in the notebook She read the
Bible read it, prayed over it (Wonderful Counsellor, open Thy word to my
heart. Open my heart to Thy word), marked it, quoted it, asked the Lord to
help her to understand, remember, and live by it. She believed every word of it
to be inspired by God, profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for
instruction in righteousness In her notebook is a prayer list for each day of
the week, with the names of us six children at the top of each day (op cit, p.
173 175).

The congregation has many older women like that. So we are to treat them
with the same affection and high regard as our own mothers. In this we are to
be an example to the world. Brian Edwards says, I stood in the inevitable post
office queue a few years ago when an elderly man ahead of me was collecting
his pension and that of his wife. The counter clerk returned the wifes book with
an apology: I am sorry, your wife hasnt signed it. The immediate response of
her husband was The silly old cow. That went through me like a knife. If that
was the way he spoke of her in public I dreaded to think what he said to her in
the home ( Brian Edwards, The Ten Commandments For Today, Day One
Publications, 1996, p.168).
John Stott makes an interesting observation on these words, Treat older
women as mothers; I find here good biblical warrant for a recognition in the
congregation of the generation gap. True, we are all brothers and sisters in
Christ. Yet it seems to me artificial in the West when students breeze up to me
and hail me by my Christian name, even though I am old enough to be their
great-grandfather! (John Stott, The Message of Timothy and Titus, IVP, 1996,
p.125). I find this attitude to be particularly demeaning in sheltered homes for
the elderly. Someone called Maggie Kuhn wrote, The ultimate indignity is to be
given a bedpan by a stranger who calls you by your first name (Observor, 20
August, 1978). The congregation has to be an example to the world of affection
and honour to older women.
4. Treat Younger Women as Sisters, with Absolute Purity.
Isnt that a high standard? Absolute purity. It is a good translation. The phrase
literally is all purity, that is, exclusive purity. We are called to live like that in
this impure civilisation. Vogue magazine is the worlds top fashion journal. It
has a French and English language edition. On Friday the Times was reviewing
the latest magazine and it said in bold type, There is scarcely a word or an
image in the 300-page French Vogue extravaganza that hasnt to do with sex
(The Times, Feb. 11, 2000, p.39). How wearying and narrow a view of Gods
creation. How cripplingly limiting. How tempting, causing a restlessness
nothing can satisfy. How impure! And we are called to live in absolute purity in
such a culture.
There is an incident recorded of Jesus sitting teaching a crowd of people in the
courts of the temple at dawn and a crowd of Pharisees and religious teachers
storming into the meeting dragging a woman, her face full of fear and shame,
her clothing disarrayed. Weve caught this woman in the act of adultery.
Moses in his law says she should be stoned to death. Now what do you say? It
was, of course, a trap. They were not interested in the fate of the woman. They
wanted something with which to discredit Jesus. If he had said, Go ahead and
stone her, then he would have appeared harsh and merciless. If he had told
them Moses was wrong, or had commanded them to let her go he would have
been undermining the truth of the Scriptures and the seriousness of this sin.
What the Lord did actually say to them was, Let the man who has never
committed a sin of act or word or thought or omission let the one who never
lusted after a woman in his heart let him be the one to pick up a stone and
stone this woman. Jesus turned from them, looked down and wrote on the

sand, and when he next looked up he saw only the woman standing there,
because Those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones
first (John 8:9). I want to ask you, would you have had the right to pick up a
stone and throw it at her? Are you without reproach? Are you perfectly pure in
act and word and thought? Any man here? Then we are all a bunch of sinners.
That is exactly what we are.
Those evil men in the cold light of dawn had made two great mistakes: they
came to Jesus to trap him, and then they went away from Jesus leaving him. Do
you understand? They abandoned the only one who could help them. They
should have stayed there with the woman and said, We take our place
alongside her. Our only hope is that God has not sent his Son into the world to
condemn the world. Be merciful to us too O Son of God! Who else is able to
deliver people from sexual distress but Jesus? The reason I say that is because I
myself have been helped by him. This is not some theory, but it is from my
experience that I say he can help us all.
There was an occasion when Pastor Wilhlem Busch had been asked to speak on
this very subject in a small town near Lippe at a meeting for teenagers. He
went into a room and then blinked at what confronted him, the noise, and thick
tobacco smoke which hung over the place. Some of the boys had brought
whisky. There was girls sitting on boys laps. He said to himself, And you are
going to speak here? Well, old feller, youll need plenty of courage. There was
a moment of silence and Pastor Buschs opening words were, We can
experience heart-breaking distress in our sex life. You could hear a pin drop. A
girl moved off the knees of a boy and all those teenagers looked at him. They
had all seemed so lively and excited and happy, but the attention with which
his words were greeted showed the truth we can experience heart-breaking
distress in our sex life.
The Bible has much to say on this theme, but people think it is irrelevant. They
believe that we have grown out of the Bible, but in fact this is the only book
that can make them happy. One day Pastor Busch was sick-visiting in his city of
Essen and he walked into a mens ward in one local hospital to be greeted
warmly by six men. They had seen him making his rounds and were ready for
him. Pastor Busch, they said, Wed like to ask you a question. Okay, Im
listening. From the very first glance, I knew they were going to ask me a trick
question. One of them, under the watchful eyes of his fellow patients, asked,
You believe that God is all-powerful, dont you? Yes, I do, I said. Well, he
continued, here is my question: Could your God create a rock that would be so
heavy that even he himself couldnt lift it?
Have you seen the trap? Whether I answered yes or no, the conclusion
would be the same God is not all-powerful. I thought the matter over for a
moment, and wondered if I should explain this to him, but it all seemed so
stupid to me that in turn I asked him a question: Sir, before answering, Id like
to know whether you have sleepless nights over this question. Sleepless
nights? he asked, a look of blank astonishment on his face. Oh no! Well, its
like this, I continued, my time is limited, so I answer only those questions
which are depriving people of their sleep. Tell me, sir, what is hindering you
from sleeping?

The answer was immediate: Ive got a problem with my girlfriend. Shes
pregnant, and we cant get married yet. Well, I said, if thats what is causing
you sleepless nights, lets talk about it. All right, if you want to, he agreed,
rather surprised. But what does that have to do with religion? he asked. I
answered, Your question about the rock has nothing whatsoever to do with
Christianity. But its not so concerning that affair with your girlfriend. In this
instance you were at fault. You broke one of Gods commandments in having
sexual relations with her. So now you are trying to rack your brains and find a
way out an even greater sin. You see, you are stuck in the mud. Your only
chance of getting out is to turn to God, and to repent, by confessing to him,
Lord, I have sinned. Then, and only then, will the Lord begin to do something
for you. The young man listened attentively. He realised that Jesus was
interested in the burden which was weighing on his conscience. He could help
him and repair his wasted life (Wilhelm Busch, Jesus Our Destiny Inter
Publishing Service, 1996, pp.172&173).
What does the Bible say about your relationship with younger women? It says
you are to treat them like your kid sister, with absolute purity. This Christian girl
is your dear sibling, and of course you are close to her, and you she loves and
admires as a dear older brother. You must do nothing to break that trust. You
share the same Father who has taught you the same values and given you the
same goals in life. You are in tune with one another, enjoying the world of
ideas, and thankful for your heavenly Fathers love. You sacrifice for her, and
you are concerned for her physical well-being, her emotional security, and
supremely for her spiritual welfare. You have a sense of responsibility for one
another. Your brotherly and sisterly love is never claustrophobic, exclusive or
possessive. You draw out the potential and encourage the strengths of one
another. That is the love of a brother and sister. Touching does not come into
their love. Of course they may hug when they see one another and hug when
they leave.
So Timothy is to stand by his sister, help her discover her gifts, offer her
encouragement and prayer and support. He doesnt get extremely close to one
sister, so that she begins to feel she is being stalked, while ignoring the others.
He might feel closer to one, but he is just as much a brother to the others. He
must resist infatuation with one sister.
If you have a close relationship with one member of the opposite sex then, as it
goes on, it must have marriage in mind. Of course, not all close friendships will
end in marriage. As the friendship goes on one person may come to the
conclusion that they are not prepared to spend the rest of their lives with that
person. That question mark over every close friendship between a brother and
sister in Christ means you are careful about pairing off, and what you do when
you are together. The words of Paul here are very convicting, absolute purity.
Think and pray about this friendship. Weigh carefully before God the
implications of investing yourself in this particular relationship. Someone has
said, Jesus did not choose his friends in the wake of a surge of emotions or
because a person happened to be endowed with a good figure or fine features.
He engaged his mind in every decision he made and always submitted these
decisions to his Father, seeking his approval before he acted. Sift your motives

with care, asking: Why am I wanting this relationship? Is it for my benefit or the
other persons or both?
Absolute purity means never doing anything that would cause that person
harm mentally, spiritually or emotionally. It means being concerned that they
continue to grow spiritually. It means that you do all in your power to ensure
that they go on serving God faithfully, and that you are drawing out their full
potential. If you value the ideal of absolute purity then you wont skip the
friendship stage of a relationship, you wont mistake a physical relationship for
love, you wont let yourselves be isolated from other vital relationships, you
wont be distracted from your primary responsibility of preparing for the future,
and you will not be discontented with Gods gift of singleness.
Absolute purity means every relationship becomes an opportunity to model
Christs love; your unmarried years are a gift from God; you cant own someone
outside of marriage; you avoid situations that might compromise the purity of
your body or mind.
All Christian fathers and mothers are committed to the ideal of absolute
purity for their sons and daughters. The Welsh singers Tom Jones and Cerys
Matthews of Catatonia have made a record of that old duet, Baby, its cold
outside. In the song the man is trying to persuade the woman not to go home
yet and stay longer, and she is producing counter arguments why I really must
go, But Baby its cold outside. One of the pleas she raises is this My
father is waiting at the door. Now that is a great argument to produce. You
have a father who cares for you, and takes responsibility for you, and he will be
waiting for your return. He wont go to bed until you are back, even if Baby
its cold outside. Our fathers and mothers are committed to absolute purity.
They have their own regrets and their own experience, and at night they are
waiting for you to get back from your date, and for the sound of your key in the
front door.
We fathers are conservative and protective, especially when our daughters go
off to university. I am hopelessly out of tune with this culture. For example, the
halls of residence in our universities are now mixed halls. Men and women live
in adjacent rooms, and share the same kitchen. I can just about comprehend
that. But they share the same bathrooms and showers, and that is something I
find unacceptable, and, I guess, most women students also. They want a
bathroom in which they feel secure and totally safe and feminine without
strange men knocking on the door and pushing against it. There needs to be
bathrooms for women only, because there are such attacks on purity. I have
the same feelings about mixed sex wards in hospitals. We prefer male and
female wards for the same reasons.
Absolute purity is a great standard. Implemented it would mean far fewer
abortions, and far less single mothers, an end to the epidemic of AIDS and
other sexually transmitted disease, and it would mean much more happiness
and fun in the world. Because the great lie is that Christian teaching takes
away the joy of life. That rumour comes from the pit. It is actually absolute
purity that makes us happy younger people and older people.
There are two useful books on this theme. There is Elisabeth Elliots Passion
and Purity (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1984), and Joshua Harriss

I Kissed Dating Goodbye Multnomah Books, Oregon, 1997). But the best book
of all on relationships is the Bible, and the best person to help you is the
Wonderful Counsellor, the Lord Jesus Christ.
13th February 2000 GEOFF THOMAS